“Germany rejects reparation payments to former colonies

By Charmaine Ngatjiheue

16 August 2025

The German government says it will not make any reparation payments to Germany’s former colonies, since there was no international criminal law at the time of colonial-era atrocities.

The former colonies include Namibia, where the 1904-08 Herero and Nama genocide claimed the lives of an estimated 100 000 victims.

The German government’s stance was reported by the newspaper Tagesspiegel, in connection with a parliamentary question from the Green party.

The newspaper reports that the German government says the concept of reparations is not applicable in the context of Germany’s colonial past, hence it is determined to avoid the term ‘reparations’, presumably to prevent legal claims of incalculable amounts.

Namibia and Germany in 2021 concluded a joint declaration in which Germany acknowledged that what happened in the German colony of Namibia was a genocide “in today’s perspective”.

In terms of the declaration, Germany was set to apologise through its president for atrocities in Namibia and was to give Namibia 1.1 billion euros for reconstruction and reconciliation.

[…]

Germany maintains the money was expressly intended as a ‘gesture of recognition’ and not as reparations – to possibly prevent further legal claims.

A Green party member of the German Bundestag, Awet Tesfaiesus, has argued that the German government’s approach to certain policies or historical issues reproduces colonial hierarchies.

Colonial hierarchies are described as systems of social, political and economic power established during the colonial era that ranked people based on race, ethnicity and class.

“It cannot be our aim to hide behind formal legal arguments, especially not in a republic whose constitution places inviolable human dignity at the center of its statehood,” Tesfaiesus told the Tagesspiegel.

[…]”

• Full report “Germany rejects reparation payments to former colonies” on the website of the Namibian (last checked in August 2025).

• See also the report “Aufarbeitung der Kolonialvergangenheit: Leistet Deutschland genug?” by the Tagesspiegel (in German; last checked in August 2025).

• See also “Aufarbeitung der deutschen Kolonialvergangenheit” (“Reappraisal of Germany’s colonial past”). Response of the German Government dated 14 August 2025 to the minor interpellation by the parliamentary group of the political party Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, in the ‘Primary Sources’ section of this website.

• See also the Joint Declaration of the Governments of Germany and Namibia in the ‘Primary Sources’ section of this website.